What is Storj?

Storj is one of the oldest crypto token projects in the world, based in Atlanta. The initiative offers an Ethereum Blockchain-based, open source and decentralized, cloud data storage service with end-to-end encryption. Storj service has very low fees and no downtime when compared to other popular cloud storage services. The company's CEO is Shawn Wilkinson.

Major personalities in the Ethereum world like Vitalik Buterin have stated that “Decentralized storage systems like Storj have the potential to eliminate high markup costs and inefficiencies while providing a much higher level of reliability, privacy, and quality than current mainstream services.”

The STRJ Token and Presale

The STRJ Token (Formerly SJCX) presale met its $30 million goals only a week after launching. This token is intended to be used as payment for the network´s users, and it will also be exchangeable for storage space in the service. The initiative aims to become the largest, highest performing and most cost-effective data storage provider without operating a single data center

Around mid-2017, the Storj network included more than 20k API users in charge of data storage and over 18k miners who rent their bandwidth and available storage through the platform, registering a consistent, double-digit monthly growth. The company has so far forged alliances with the Microsoft Azure service and Heroku with the aim of providing an encrypted and distributed solution that allows developers to store data easily and optimally.

Recently, in early December 2017, the Storj network made an announcement that they were locking around 245 million tokens as a reserve (worth over $300 million at the time of the announcement) for six months with the intention of offering clarity to investors about when and how they will be able to gain access to their liquid assets.

The reserve tokens were originally meant to be released on December 20, 2017, but according to Storj spokespersons, this move will bring more stability to the network until the company can formulate a clear timeline for the project.

According to Matthew May, Storj’s chief financial officer, there is a “real need for transparency given the large number of ICOs available at the moment.” May believes there are some bad actors that are trying to manipulate the prices and profit off these coins, and has declared that Storj’s ultimate goal is to build a beautiful and decent storage platform while making the best possible decisions about stability and functionality for the project.

Regarding the mechanism of data distribution, Storj´s Whitepaper refers to “Data Sharding” where a so-called shard is a portion of an encrypted file to be stored on this network. According to the document, sharding has a number of security, privacy, performance, and availability advantages.

Files should be encrypted on the client’s side before being sharded. The reference implementation uses AES256-CTR, but convergent encryption or any other desirable system could be implemented. This protects the content of the data from the storage provider or farmer housing the data. The owner of the data remains in control of the encryption key and therefore retains complete control and access to the data.